


Uncrossed

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:10:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson and Hughes, uncrossed. [Features lyrics from Elder Tree, written by Riverside.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncrossed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClassicVintageWithATwist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ClassicVintageWithATwist).



> Sequel to [Crossed](http://archiveofourown.org/works/683682).

_**I. A little nook I have seen.** _

Carson waits a beat, a second, a third; gives her time to withdraw down the hall to her pantry. That small space in this enormous house, he thinks; that's all she has that belongs to her. And suddenly it seems obscene to him, an affront; all that she is, the multitudes that she contains, all confined to that tiny closet, that closed corner. It seems that she should move in palaces and arenas, over moors and highlands, through heather and under endless skies; that stifling room she's banished to for hours at a stretch is a gross mockery of her vast interior landscape.

She's bested him today, fooled him so completely and utterly that he wonders if he knows her at all, if one of her shifting faces is the true one or if they all make up some subtle, sensual whole that he'll never completely see. His breath leaves him in a long, slow exhale as he thinks of how she moved in the field among the men, silently stalking and shooting in that jostling pack of masculinity, all feminine grace and strength and mystery. Elsie had broached that exclusive arena of malehood with nothing more than a low cap brim and a pound of nerve, wrapped in trappings of tobacco-scented tweed, and she had pulled it off.

That's the damned thing. She had pulled it off in front of His Lordship and the other gentlemen, which was feat enough, but she had eluded him somehow. How had she done it? Carson lets his thoughts wander as he moves slowly toward her office, careful to betray nothing in his gait or expression. How had she done it? There isn't an object of this house, nor resident or servant within, that can move a meter to the left without his watchful eye upon it. He is growing older, or she bolder, or both. He pauses in front of her door for a long moment before turning the knob, pushing it open.

Both, he thinks. 

Both.

_**II. You can find me there, that's where I'll be.** _

She knocks back another mouthful of whiskey, barely wincing at the burn, and smiles a little. He'll follow her, because doesn't he always? Isn't he always a step or two behind her, as steady as a ticking clock? With all the change this house has seen, Carson has remained her constant and she his for fifteen years and that's not likely to change now. Perhaps especially not now. If pressed, she can't say exactly what possessed her to take the risks she took today, to run the razor's edge like that laughing milkmaid she was all those years ago. All she can say is that the black dress was too tight around her throat this morning, her arms too pinned to her sides, her chest too constricted to breathe the same musty, rottenly perfumed air for another day. She needed to be out in the sun and the grass with a gun in her hands, the same as when her father taught her to shoot her first grouse with his worn, battered rifle. 

There are reasons for living as she does, just as there are reasons that he lives as he must. She's not tried to argue that since her first day working in this house and she won't try to argue it now. The glass lifts again, she drinks. Elsie is moving swiftly toward sixty, and if she's never entertained foolish and romantic notions, she certainly doesn't entertain them at this late hour of her life. That fact, however, doesn't warm her at night or make the mornings any less dull, so it is her own affair to find release where it can be found. 

She doesn't ask for much. A few hours with the freedom of a man, that's all; a few hours to answer to no one but herself, to fulfill no desires or whims but her own. She thinks it's not so much to ask once in a decade or two. It's not a mortal sin to simply want something every now and then, despite what they're trained and told as servants.

The door opens and she turns in the misty evening light.

Not a sin at all.

She holds out her hand, and he locks the door behind him.

_**III. I have tried but I cannot be, help me grow down deep.** _

Carson looks at her openly now, notes all of the details he missed while in the field. How the tweeds somehow make her shape more feminine rather than less, at least to the eye that truly cares to see. How her hair threatens to escape its confines. He looks at her fingers curved around the heavy glass. A woman's hand, beautifully slender, the fingernails softly shining and filed into pretty ovals. Her fingers around the glass and she is drinking not the usual sherry or even gin, but whiskey. He swallows, tilts his head back, breathes in.

They make light, quiet conversation as he begins to undress her. The shooting was good, yes, thank you; he has been busy today, indeed, yes, thank you. The jacket is replaced carefully on its hanger that is there and waiting and she watches him with a slight smile, drinks from the heavy crystal cup. She smells maddeningly of the spirits and of her perfume, of the fresh grass and gunsmoke, and if his hands shake a little as he kneels to remove her riding boots, what of it? If his palms skim her calves and fondle the soft arches of her insteps, who can fault him? His fingers are loose and skilled as he begins to slide the buttons of the linen shirt open to reveal the cream throat, the lightly freckled shoulders, the slope of breast and she is close, so close to him but there has been no invitation to touch all of this, only the permission to unveil it. The shirt slides from her arms and he sees now that she is indeed without corset, without any of the garments that would have pushed her shape into exaggerated femininity; beneath the soft cotton and the worn tweed trousers there is only her thin chemise, pulled tight and tucked and pinned in such a way as to lightly bind her body, to flatten the curves and swells. 

His breath catches as he removes the pins and the careful tucks, as breast and hip are freed to fill the shift in their natural shape again. Fingers encircle his wrist and he quietly obeys as she leads him to her chair and urges him to sit, strong arms pushing on broad chest and then those clever hands are working between his legs, opening his clothes, revealing his sex, cupping it in warm palms where it hardens and grows, painfully so, under her gentle, merciless touch.

He breathes out, forces himself to remain still and silent as she makes him ready to pleasure her. 

However she wants, whatever she needs. To serve her, finally, yes.

To remain quiet for once. To obey.

_**IV. Along the roots that grow down tall, hold me down before I fall.** _

Her hands shake as she impatiently pulls her chemise around her hips. She had been in control, amazingly so, until now but he is too much; the pewter of his hair, the silver lights that play across his eyes, the pressed shirt, the heavy solid width of his body beneath her and all around her is a cloud of his scent. Leather and spice and good wine, clean cotton and hot irons and he is pliant, yielding, giving no thought to his own wants as she aligns her body with his, biting back his choked sounds as she pushes down on him in one hard motion. She's hot and slick and swollen there between her thighs and his sex fills her, pushes against the strong walls of her cunt, and she takes him without finesse or any thought toward timing or grace.

He holds her with hard hands on soft hips, fingertips biting into sweet curves as her body rises and falls in hard, pounding rhythm and her hands are curled tightly over his shoulders. This should have been different, she supposes; this should have been in a bed with romantic words and no light on and certainly she should be laying passive and patient beneath him but all of that was never for them anyway. Her body moves faster, harder and he's shuddering now with the pressure of submission, with the denial of his own urges. An offering to everything between them, a sacrament to all they've seen and been, a holy text they keep locked away.

Life has shaped them both and this is how they are shaped: a sharp line, a warm hollow, a cool stone, a strong column, an arch.

Everything is coming together now and she stiffens, her thighs tighten around him and her fingers clamp down and she pulls him close, closer, cradles his head and presses her mouth again and again to the lines that map his beautiful face; she comes and he understands the command in those hot open-mouthed kisses and he gives her his climax, finally, deep inside.

This is the way they are shaped: a shining crescent, a love's last flowering, a shattered star. Apart, the altars. Together, the temple.


End file.
